Moon Revenge
by Meredith T. Tasaki
Summary: GitF, slight Doomsday spoilers. A crossing of paths. There's a fine line to walk, he'll realize. There's a place between despair and recklessness, and he's about to die by the lessons he's forgotten.


Moon Revenge

Summary: GitF, (slight) Doomsday spoilers. There's a fine line to walk, he'll realize. There's a place between despair and recklessness, and he's about to die by the lessons he's forgotten.

Rating: Mmm... PG-13, ffn's T, for Rose having a very bad time and being angry about it. Probably not necessary, but...

Disclaimer: I hold no rights whatsoever to Doctor Who. Particularly not to Ten. Do have a long pink scarf, though.

Also, there are about a million song quotes and fragments stuck in here, because when you get up as early as I've been, the wall between the (sub)conscious inspirations for your fic and the story itself realy begins to dissolve. None of them are mine. Takeuchi Naoko-sama is the primary source, though I've no doubt there are a million title-holders in between...

Notes: Written fairly quickly. Wish certain spots had worked out better, but all in all, it tells the story, so that's okay.

While there are some spoilers for Doomsday in this fic, it's really nothing you haven't already picked up by reading less-than-covert fic summaries. And how do I know this...? (-Accusing glare at no one in particular-) Also, if there's a problem in GitF, it's not Reinette. Overly perfect, perhaps, but it's another case of blame-the-Other-Woman syndrome...

Yes, I have stuck translated fragments of Japanese songs in here. Why? Because he must have found his way out of Cardiff at _some_ point. And now I'm gonna shut up before I totally ruin the mood...

(-)

There's a fine line to walk, he'll realize, as he backs away, arms slightly behind, looking for the way out that's always been there _somewhere_.

There's a line between being so guilty you eat yourself alive, and being so, well, unguilty that you force others to do it for you.

There's a line, and for everyone else it's actually pretty thick, but evidently he's thicker, because he's about to die by the lessons he's forgotten.

He'll back against the wall, and feel for a door. No elevator behind him, today.

"I'm sorry," he'll say. "I'm so, so sorry, Rose."

And he'll close his eyes, praying that will be enough.

(-)

But right now, it's Tokyo, late 20th century, early spring (possibly March?). He's wandering the streets aimlessly, with a half-formed intention to find a park and see if the _sakura_ trees are in bloom. Can't be a proper tourist without visiting the cherry blossoms. Can't be a proper _Japanese citizen_ without visiting the cherry blossoms, come to think of it. They're proud of it, as well they should be.

But for now he's walking the streets, giving an amiable, absent smile to the crowd of businessmen and schoolgirls with oddly-colored hair. Not that the hair-color fad's _really_ big yet; couple hundred years, Neo-tokyo, they'll have every color in the visible spectrum and several in the ultraviolet. Not to _mention_ Satellite Tokyo, one through seven...

But none of that matters. What matters is right now, the sunlight warming the world, the schoolgirls giggling among themselves at the bus stop, the cheery song from the televisions in the shop window-- probably an _anime_, and a popular one, to judge from the few people pressed against the glass--

--the way all of that is spinning around him, bottom dropping out, so intensely aware of the spinning of the world-- of the galaxy!-- that he's sure it's going to come to its senses and throw him out, the way it should've long ago--

--He reels, steadies, apologizes to the schoolgirl he's backed into before she can jab him with the pin she keeps in her pocket, and looks across the street.

To see himself, except the other him's bumped into a fruit stand and is currently too busy apologizing fervently to the propritress to notice his mirror across the street.

A crossing of paths, perhaps?

(_Since that time you disappeared_

_an endless journey to search for you has begun_, sings the telly.

This will haunt him. He just doesn't know it yet.)

The other isn't dressed like him at all. The other him seems to have bought his clothes from a department store, right here in Tokyo, and they seem-- worn, as if they've been a few rounds with the washing machine and lost. Of course he knows the language, but something about the way he's moving seems so-- _human_, Japanese, in a way he's never been able to counterfeit.

It's almost as if-- it couldn't be, nah. It's almost as if he lives here.

(_My heart trembles from that day's secret kiss._

_No matter how painful our destiny may be,_

_I will continue to search for you...!_

A silly song, a girly show, completely pointless and only tangentially related to anything. But those are exactly the sort of things that always haunt him.)

The second him looks up and his expression goes still, like a cold has struck him straight to the heart.

He doesn't move for a moment, just stands there, fragments of the silly, fluffy song entering his ears and drifting through his brain.

_(Don't grieve, I will follow you, this song will be the stars' giudepost, without fail I will find you!..._)

It's the other him who crosses the street, staring at him. They stand there for a moment, staring at each other, wondering exactly how much trouble they've just stumbled across.

"Funny," says the other him, sounding ridiculously old, "I don't remember being you."

"Well, neither do I. Remember being _you_, I mean. I have a fairly good memory of being myself."

"No, this makes sense," says the other him. "Two months ago, when that ship blew up--"

"Ah, 'blew up', did it?"

"Happened to combust whilst I was in the vicinity. Point is, I was _afraid_ I might've slipped though a time window."

He blinks. "Alternate universe, then?"

"Seems so."

"That's new. What's different?"

"Did you meet a girl named Reinette?"

The name still has power over him, he discovers, trying to keep his hearts under control. "Yes."

"Really? Huh." The other him blinks. "Well, I went after her and was trapped in Paris. King was thrilled, I can tell you that."

"So did I. But she found a way to send me back."

"Well. That's interesting."

"Isn't it."

They both stand there, refusing to ask the question. _How did that work out for you?_

"So I've been wandering around for a few hundred years," says the other him.

"Sounds like normal."

"Cept it's on one planet. Which gets a little boring."

"I'd imagine."

"So. given that our both being here is a time paradox we'll have to resolve anyway, would you mind, when you drop me off in my own dimension, helping me find my TARDIS?"

"Shouldn't be that hard, on a derelict spaceship, should it? Sure. Universe without the Doctor-- that's a sad thing. No universe should be forced to suffer that."

"Excellent," says the other him. "Er-- is there any chance we could leave now? Space-time continuum, you know. And it turns out you _can_ get sick of cherry blossoms. Though I must admit it has more cataclysms than any city save London."

"Absolutely," he says. "Least I can do for a parallel self. Follow me."

(-)

He doesn't remember it at the moment, but he will soon enough. That day, close to now, when he was/will have been here-- that day, on a low ebb, feeling lost and alone and like he could never get anyone to believe him in time. So many times he felt that... That period without name, when the universe was ending and the only people who believed it were already dead. So many he'd failed to persuade.

And in those times, silly, incongrous, the memory that came to his mind was one that was this place, close to this time. A karaoke bar, of all the impossible things, because humans put more wisdom in their pop songs than some Time Lords learned in millenia.

(Justin Timberlake, of course, being one of the notable exceptions. Most of the time. Which explained a lot about the Time Lords, but he doesn't think about that anymore.)

But someone was singing, and of course it was silly, and he remembered it anyway.

_Thunder, run from here to wherever you are_

_Then shine bright, we believe you_

_With ten thousand volts, we believe you..._

Because there were people who believed in him, on occasion. There were people who believed in him that much.

To this day, it hasn't sunk in.

He doesn't know why, but he thinks it has something to do with self-preservation.

(-)

The first place they try is, quite logically, the place where he left it. Usually things stay where you leave them, but things have always bent strangely around them, and to some degree they know it.

They step out onto the derelict spaceship, and something in him knows this isn't his universe, some subtle sense of wrongness that's easy to overlook unless he looks for it.

"Right place," says the other him, looking around the ship. "Very dark, isn't it?"

"Well, I should imagine. Robots weren't exactly engineering marvels, were they? Miracle this ship hasn't fallen apart by now."

He can't help looking at the door behind him; it is open, and it is dark. One chance you get at these things, he figures. One thing tips the wrong way, and you're stuck with it forever...

"I thought I left the TARDIS here," the other him says, looking around. "Where could it have gone?"

An excellent question. "Well, it's not as if Rose and Mickey could have... driven... it... off..."

It suddenly occurs to him-- and possibly the other him, too, in the exact same moment-- what exactly he's just said.

The other him left-- no, both of them left-- Rose and Mickey here, alone with the TARDIS, in what could be politely termed a hellhole of a ship, and possibly with one or two clockwork robots still roaming the halls.

For some reason, it's never occured to them until now how momumentally stupid that was.

"We must go back and pick them up." The other him goes to the computer and boots it up, checking for the date. "See? We're a hundred years too late. We must go back and pick them--"

An alarm starts blaring, which he doesn't recall happening the last time he was here. Given that his TARDIS isn't here anyway, he thinks this is probably one of those times when discretion is the better part of valor and grabs the other him's arm, dragging him to the ship.

"I mean," the other says, "we must have picked them up already, don't you think?"

"We must have," he agrees, even though he has a feeling it might be a lie. One of those itching, nagging feelings that floats up from the bottom of his mind rather like a corpse floating to the surface of the sea, saying that something is about to go very, very wrong.

He'd call it instinct, but that's just another word for the subconscious, so he just hurries to the console and starts pulling down levers.

Strangest thing is, he thinks he recognizes that alarm from somewhere. He's heard a lot of alarms in his life, so it'll take him a while to remember which, but he has a feeling it'll turn out to be important...

Still, the subconscious has to have time to do its job, so he sets the TARDIS just a little back in time and nods his doppelganger to the door.

"You sure this is the right time?" the other him calls, stepping outside.

"Of _course_ I'm not sure this is the right time! I have to make sure we don't cross over ourselves, don't I? Dangerous enough as it is, but me, you, and your past all in the same place? There just isn't any way that could end well."

"It's still not here."

He sighs as he steps out of the TARDIS. There's still only one strange blue box here. "You don't think they figured out how to move it, do you?"

"Couldn't have. _We've _barely figured out how to do _that_."

"True." He looks up at the stars as the other him checks the computer again. "Hang on. This isn't where we were."

"It isn't?" He looks up. "How did we get here, then?"

"Luck?"

"I mean, how'd the ship get here?"

"Someone must have found it..."

"It's been ten years," the other him says, not sounding happy at all.

"Someone must have found it... And taken the TARDIS?"

"We're going to have to search for it. Just hope I had the sense to leave the tracking circuits open..."

Suddenly, there's another alarm. Not just an alarm, again, but an entirely _different_ alarm which is still somehow familiar.

"We're in trouble," he says, and hurries back into his TARDIS. His other self is right behind.

Working together, the two of them manage to set up the proper equipment fairly quickly. He glances at the viewscreen; there are guards out there, now, familiar-looking guards. "Do you recognise that uniform?"

The other him looks. "It looks... commercial, doesn't it? Not military."

"Right. But where from?..."

"I'm not sure," says the other him, "but I don't like the looks of those guns."

"And I don't like the looks of that equipment," he says, hurrying over to another set of levers immediately. "We've got to get out of here."

"We don't have the coordinates yet!"

"Well, we'll just have to wing it like we always do, then!" He has absolutely no intention of being trapped here by these guards, by these people with this rather advanced scientific equipment, by these damn dangerous fools from...

He watches the viewscreen as the image slowly fades. "Technology, technology, equipment, engineering, scientific, experimental, damn it, I know this, computing, hardware, software--"

"_Gates-Futsuyama-K'rai Computing Conglomerate_."

"Oh, _hell_," he says, realizing it's true.

Of all the companies to run into, wouldn't it just have to be this one? The ridiculously powerful unofficial-monopoly with domination over a quadrant of the galaxy and very dubious government defense contracts, not to mention many reasons to dislike him.

This was getting worse and worse. But that other alarm, the first one... That didn't sound like GFK at all.

But alarms could change...

He glances at the console. "Right, this should be about two years later. Where's your TARDIS..."

"Wow, we're close," comments the other him, sounding surprised.

"Skills," he says, daring him to say otherwise.

The other him isn't willing to take him up on the bet. "So it's just a few hundred yards that way..." He steps out of the TARDIS. "Oh, hell."

He steps out behind him, already having a vague idea what they're going to see. And yes, he's right, they're right where he was afraid they'd be.

Right by the sign outside the main offices of GFK Computing Conglomerate, Ltd.

"Right," he says. "Well, I guess it's time to get them mad at us, again."

"Let's just hope they don't try to dissect us again."

He winces. "Let's not talk about that right now."

"Right. Sorry."

Putting their heads together (but not too close-- Time Lords might be resistant to temporospatial paradoxes, but it was silly to tempt fate), they came up with a brilliant and subtle plan.

"Hello!" he tells the receptionist, with his cheeriest smile. "We think we left something here the other day, when we were at that meeting in Mr-- Mr--"

"Haberland, wasn't it?" says the other him.

"Cumberland-Mori?"

"Oh, Carruthers-Molotov."

"No, no, Nikolai Currington."

"That _can't_ be it! Nicholas Harrington, maybe?"

"Didn't that person on the phone say Nichole Barr-Tsukishirou?"

"Silence!" cries the receptionist, freeing a tentacle from the computer interface to slap them both upside the head. "The twin study is upstairs, Coranado-Jenkins and Shi'nau-Mizuno. Go to the office across the lobby and ask for a visitor's pass. I warn you, do not blibber to the security there as much as you have today, or whatever you have left in this place will be thrown out after you... from the seventh-floor window."

"Thank you," they answer as one, and hurry away.

"That worked surprisingly well," comments the other him.

"Yes, and we're lucky there was actually a twin study going, aren't we?"

"Probably a trap," agrees the other him. "Let's just hope our current faces aren't in the system yet."

As it happens, no one even bats an eye at them in the security office, not bothering to listen to their story of leaving something in the conference room before they shove them in front of the cameras and tell them not to smile. It gives him time to keep wondering where he's heard that first alarm before, and wonder if the other him is thinking of that too. Or if he's too busy wondering what he's done to Rose and Mickey to bother.

That could have been him. He meant it to be. He meant to trap himself in eighteenth-century France with no way back, and if Reinette hadn't been so incredibly fantastic, he would've managed it. And what of Rose and Mickey, on an alien cannibal ship in the fifty-first century with no way home and no way out? What had he thought would happen to them?

Answer: he hadn't thought. Not for a second.

And he has an awful feeling that's only the most prominent example of a disease that's been haunting him all this life.

But he doesn't have time to get involved in that mess right now.

They walk to the elevator and punch the button for the seventh floor, for appearances' sake.

"I don't like that it's here," says the other him, staring at his distorted reflection in the metal doors. "I don't like what that might mean."

That they might be here as well, and that bad things might happen to temporal anomalies in this place. "Neither do I."

The doors open, and they head out, looking for another elevator. There are probably high-tech security systems in this place; they've probably been tagged already. But they don't need to get out of this place. They just need to get in.

They take the next set of elevators they see and go down. They don't have much in the way of triangulation, but the other him is pretty sure they're looking for sub-basement two.

The feeling of imminent doom is only growing stronger, so that when the elevator doors slide open with the most ridiculously innocuous ding he's ever heard, he's tensed and ready for the entire GFK army to come flooding in.

But there's no army. There's only one soldier.

"No unauthorized personnel are permitted on this floor," it says, in a distorted cyborg voice. "Please return to the elevator and input your correct destination."

"Right," says the other him, "we were just looking for something we left somewhere around--"

"Please return to the elevator."

"Right, right, but could we just look around for a--" he tries.

"Please return to the elevator."

"We won't be a second, we promise."

"_You_."

For a second, he's actually hopeful, because at least they got a response that wasn't "Please return to the elevator"-- but then it hits him, the wave of imminent doom crashing over his head like a tsunami. The face is older, and plasticized, and bald, and motionless, and Rose.

"Rose?" the other him whispers. He can feel him shaking, like he hasn't since-- he can't remember when.

"_You_," she says, and her voice conveys the hatred that her face cannot.

"My God, Rose..." the other him whispers.

"Finally came to rescue your TARDIS, didn't you? I always was surprised. Abandoning me an' Mickey, that was no surprise. None of us were special. But she was. An' you left her there on that hell-ship to gather dust like the rest of _how dare you show your face back here again, you sons of bitches!_"

She doesn't seem to care much that there's two of him. Captivated by the horror of the light that glints off the metal in her head, he understands that completely.

"I..." says the other him, and can't think of another word.

"Just swan off, designated driver, leaving us on the cannibal ship of death! No way out, 'cept opening up the TARDIS again, and turns out the one thing you don't have in that ship is a tow truck! Or an instruction manual! _Who the hell are you? What did you do with the man I met?_"

All this, entirely expressionless. The sort of thing that could break a person.

"Rose, I--" the other him says faintly. "I'm-- I'm so--"

And then she's putting a hand to the sides of your heads, damning spatiotemporal paradoxes to hell like she always does, because as many pop psychotherapists have pointed out over the years, no woman can forgive you until she _knows_ you understand what she did.

A terrible, lopsided circle, because she has almost as little trouble slipping into his mind as Reinette did. Then again, she's been there before...

...how could he have forgotten it... a thousand melodies, and the light...

(-)

A hundred memories, without thought to rhyme or reason or organization, just thrown at them like knives in rough chronological order.

"He's coming back," she says, heart set firm against what she won't admit is the truth. "He'll find a way. He always does. He won't just leave us here."

"He's coming back!" she says, when Mickey suggests they retreat to the TARDIS and asks how much food he's got in the pantry.

"He's coming back," she tells herself after the first week, chastising herself for her lack of faith.

"He's not coming back," Mickey tells her, for the umpteenth time-- she can't remember when.

"He has to! He can't just _leave_ us here! He's not _like_ that!"

"Yeah, Rose. He really is."

"No, you see-- he has to come back. Because I'm not that special, and Sarah Jane isn't that special, and _nobody_ is that special, so he has to be coming back! Don't you understand?! He isn't _like_ that. He doesn't _do_ that. Not with _anyone_. So he's coming back."

Mickey knows enough not to answer.

"We have to check."

"No, we don't."

"Yes, we do!"

"It's his damn ship, Rose! If he came back, he would've found it!"

He's right. "You're wrong! He could be out there!"

"You know he can't!"

"What the hell do you want to do? Stay in here the rest of your life?"

"Why don't we just break open this thing again like we did last time?"

"'Cos it nearly killed me last time and we don't have a truck!"

"...Okay, valid points. We can't go out there, Rose. What if those things are still out there?"

"They weren't before, were they? We can't just stay here, Mickey! We've got to do _something_!"

_We were just your moons, weren't we? Cold lifeless things that circled around you, reflecting your light back at you. Never near you. You'd never allow it. 'Cause we'd burn up if we tried. Or that's what you told yourself. The truth is, you were just afraid we'd crash into you, knock you off course, make you realize we were there. Couldn't be those pretty little things at arm's length if we crashed into you. You couldn't allow it, could you?_

_Except that once. With her. And I don't understand it, not at all._

_Oh, love, I understand. Except no one understands it, but you know what I mean. And I can see how it could be her and never me, never even Sarah Jane, never anyone else I don't know about who's loved you and gone away. But why so suddenly? Why only her?_

_I was in love like that once-- so head-over-heels stupid I forgot everyone an' everything else in the world, and that cost me a lot._

_I was sixteen. What's your excuse?_

She's struggling and screaming as they're taken different directions, kicking, biting, anything she can possibly do, but it's all over and she knows it. All her fault, they should've just stayed in the TARDIS, but what the hell else could they have done? Their lives were over the minute he abandoned them there, and it was only a question of how. The ship was dying without him anyway, or falling into mourning, who could tell? Because apparently the poor girl had discovered even after a thousand years, _she_ wasn't special enough to him, either.

Excuses, reasons, but it's still all her fault, because they could've stayed and probably died of old age-- she thinks she could've coaxed the ship into staying awake, awake enough to keep hot water, and there's probably enough food somewhere in there to make it a billion-year bunker. Her own fault.

But not only her own fault. Men never do learn responsibility, do they? Nine hundred years. She would've sworn he knew it before.

She would've sworn he'd never do this to her.

But she's been fooled like this before.

They drag her to the table, and him to the next table, and all she can do is scream she's sorry. And all she can do is scream.

_And even for you, I won't remember what happened next. Even for you. It's not mercy. You don't deserve to be spared it. But I can't do it. I can't do it to myself. So use your damn imagination._

"Sweet holy goddess," someone whispers. She can't understand why. She's pretty sure she's dead.

"Tell us what happened," they say.

"I can't," she says.

"How did you get there?"

She doesn't answer.

"What was that strange blue box we found, do you know?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Why were those robots...?"

"I don't know. They're crazy. I don't understand any of it. I can't help you."

"What's your name?"

"I don't know anymore. Half my organs aren't mine anymore... I can't help you. I can't... I can't explain anything. I don't know anything anymore."

"I want to help you," the woman says, hair a ridiculous shade of blue and eyes a ridiculous shade of grey.

"I don't think you can."

"You can stay in my apartment. Do you have anywhere else to go?"

"Why?"

"'Cause you need to stay in police custody, ma'am. You know who made that ship?"

"Not a clue."

"GFK Conglomerate. The _Madame de Pompadour_ was one of their flagships."

She stares at her. "Hang on, the what now?"

"_Madame de Pompadour_. How did you get on the ship without knowing what its name was?"

"I..."

"Look, GFK is dangerous. They don't like being told they're wrong. They don't like being told they've made a mistake. God forbid they're told they have to release a patch."

"A _patch_? Of _course_ they have to release a patch!! Their robots go insane and cannabalize human beings!"

"I know that, and you know that, but their PR department won't want to see it that way." The woman doesn't look happy about that, either; rather angry, in fact. Maybe she could like her. A little.

"You have got to be _kidding_ me!"

"Stay with me. It's free room and board. It's relative safety. For now it's still going through paperwork, but when they realize you're the only surviving witness... well... our lawyers would tell me not to finish that sentence."

"And do you listen to your lawyers?"

The woman smiles, lopsidedly. "We'd never be able to prove it, but they'd 'take custody' of you. And I'm pretty sure you don't want that."

"Well... that... doesn't sound appealing, no..."

"Come with me. You can ignore me in the comfort of my own home."

She can't help it; she smiles. "I don't mean to; it's just..."

"Don't worry about it. Come on. Trust me, just a little. Okay?"

It's probably a bad idea, but she doesn't really care much anymore. "Yes."

"Fantastic. I'll get on the paperwork, then." She beams at her, and she'll blame it on the 'fantastic', later, she'll blame it on the smile, on a hundred subtle things--

"I'm Rose. Rose Tyler."

The woman smiles at her. "Rose. Lovely name. Be back in a tic."

The woman's name is Makoto Jones, because in the fifty-first century, names are as much of a potluck affair as ancestry. She has a habit of stuffing Rose with tea, something she calls 'mochi', and something from some planet she's never heard of called 'r'chiyou noodles'. Fortunately, it tastes like chicken. Rose, in turn, introduces Makoto to the joys of beans on toast. She still can't find _quite_ the proper type of beans, but she's got a pretty good approximation going.

She's a bit of a pet, for the moment, but she can't really work up the strength to mind. She occasionally wonders if she hasn't become a bit of a housewife, but it's a roof and friendship and safety and a hug when she wakes up screaming in the middle of the night.

She could get used to this. But she knows she probably shouldn't.

Makoto comes home furious one day, and doesn't want to tell her why. Thing is, for stubborn secret-keeping, she's got nothing on the Doctor.

"They did issue a patch," she says. "But they've made it so long and so difficult to get at that a lot of people aren't bothering. And GFK won't let us just tell 'em why it's important, _nooo_, they're just billing it as a 'security flaw'. A _security flaw_! Something's got to be done."

"Can I help?" she asks.

"Rose, it'd be dangerous. They'll want to get legal custody of you. They'll find a way."

"I don't care. I want to help."

"Even if...?"

"It's something someone I cared about very much once taught me," she says, firmly. Terrified, but firm. "No matter what it might cost. You do the right thing, when no one else will. And I don't have that much more to lose."

Makoto doesn't want to agree, but she knows she'll convince her in the end.

Since she can't tell them where she came from, they've already painted her as a hacker, who exploited a regrettable security flaw in their systems to cause this horrible, horrible atrocity. However, the ship has been quarrantined, they assure everyone, and the hacker is in police custody. Of course, they'd rather have the hacker in their own custody so they can make sure they know exactly which flaws she exploited, but that's up to the judge. Until then, everyone should download the interim security patch, which should mostly fix the flaw, and contact the GFK help line if they run into any trouble.

This against Rose, who has no record, doesn't exist, and cannot satisfactorily explain how she came to be on the _Madame de Pompadour_ in the first place.

There are a few people who believe Rose. Unfortunately, none of them seem to be able to come up with a coherent reason why.

The judge rules that since she is clearly guilty of evading registration and of travelling under an assumed identity, she is liable to spend seven years in prison. However, given the terrible ordeal she's gone through, he is willing to sentence her to probation, to be served under the GFK, telling them how exactly she hacked into their ship.

She tells Makoto to make sure not to do anything stupid as the probation officer marches her out of the room. To this day, she's not sure the woman took her advice, but she prays she did.

The probation officer really does believe she's a hacker. The man he takes her to knows better.

"Well, we have to do something to rehabilitate you," he says, with a ridiculous evil smile. "Why don't we give you a security post? That would be generous of us. Mikhail, take her down to processing.

She hadn't known what that meant. She soon found out.

Really, she was just glad these people used anaesthesia.

There was a day when she'd ruined the world, and half-knew it already. She hadn't realized the extent of it yet, so when she saw him running back to her, it was... sweet. Returning to her. Coming back.

And looking back on it, it became sweet again. Even after all of that, he came back for her. Always, he came back for her. Always, he took her hand.

Never, ever abandoned her. Except once, in a storm of golden light, the one abandonment no one could avoid.

And she thought it was the same person who came back, because he said he was.

And she was willing to believe him, to follow him anywhere, even after she realized she wasn't the first, wouldn't be the last.

_Vague memories of a kiss, half-forgotten, stolen from her mind, that had nevertheless marked her to her soul-- and never the same for him--_

And then he abandoned her for a woman he'd just met. Love-- she understood love, too well. Understood it made you do stupid things. She could understand he fell in love with Reinette, and not her, not Sarah Jane; love was cruel that way.

But she couldn't understand being abandoned on a hell-ship in the fifty-first century.

Do you get it now? Have you figured it out? Have you realized what you did to me? Just abandoned me-- abandoned us _both_-- for _dead_! That isn't the Doctor I knew! It isn't! And what's killing me is _both_ of you did it! Only difference is, in one world, Reinette was a little cleverer and sent you back! _You would have abandoned us without a thought_! And in three hundred years, you never gave it a second thought! _Who are you? What did you do with the man I knew?_

Ransacking your brain is so damn impressive, huh? Well, suck on _that._

(-)

He realizes they've fallen back against the elevator wall, and she's turned away.

"Seems alternate me and Mickey owe Reinette a favor," she says. "Without her, they'd be... well, I just explained that to you, didn't I?"

He swallows convulsively, struggles to get to his feet. So wrong. How could it all go so far wrong?

_Oh, come on,_ scoffs the Nine in his head. _If you're gonna forget every single lesson you've ever learned, don't look so shocked when you fail the exam!_

"Rose," he says, "we have to get to the TARDIS."

"Please return to the elevator," she says.

"Rose--"

"Please return to the elevator before I kill you."

"Rose, _please_," he says, trying his best to look sorry and needy. "We have to get back there."

"Please return to the elevator," she says, staring straight ahead.

He reaches for the other him's arm, pulls the shaken man to his feet. They look into each other's eyes for a second; the only guard you can't charm your way past is a woman (or man) scorned.

"All right," he says-- and as one, they duck past her, making a break down the hallway.

"Intruder alert!" she cries, voice gone even more mechanical than before. "Activate program 13-A!"

Cyborgs usually aren't fast, but the hallway is long, and every door they come across is locked. And also wrong. They still aren't close enough to the TARDIS; it's still far away--

--and GFK cyborgs must be really well-made, because Rose is in front of him, with some weapon like a cross between a blaster and a bayonet, and he thinks her program probably calls for shooting first and asking questions never.

There's a fine line to walk, he realizes, backing away, arms stretched behind him, looking for the way out that's always been there somewhere.

There's a line between being so guilty you eat yourself alive, and being so, well, unguilty that you force others to do it for you.

There's a line, and for everyone else it's actually pretty thick, but evidently he's thicker, because he's about to die by the lessons he's forgotten.

His back hits the wall, and he feels around in vain for a door. No elevator behind him, today. Rose knows better than that. His Rose always knew better than that.

There's nothing he can do to atone. Nothing he can say as a defense. Nothing he can do...

...except _say_ the words this time, damn it, because that is the very, very _least_ he's ever owed her.

"I'm sorry," he says, voice trembling. "I'm so, so sorry, Rose."

And he closes his eyes, praying that will be enough.

"...Did you actually... say you were wrong?"

He risks opening one eye. She hasn't killed him yet. "Is that.. an admission of guilt?"

"Yes," he says. And "Yes," says the other him behind her.

"I haven't heard you say anything like that since..."

You're not sure what's happening, but for some reason, she still hasn't shot you, which means it's going ten times better than you dared to dream.

"Do you mean it?" she asks. Her eyes tell him she won't accept anything that isn't the truth, and she _will_ know if he lies.

"Yes," he says, and "Yes," the other him whispers behind her.

Incomprehensibly, impossibly, the gun lowers.

"A universe without the Doctor..." she says, eyes gone distant. "Well. That hardly bears thinking about, does it?"

He shivers, not quite knowing why. "Rose, I'm so sorry."

"Yeah. Maybe you are." She stares at him, searching, he can't imagine what for.

Whatever it is, she seems to find it. "Fifth door down the left. That way. _Hurry_. Reinforcements will be coming. _Don't look back._"

"Rose," says the other him, knowing it's dangerous, feeling he probably should count his blessings and walk away, but unable to stop the Nine within him (the Nine factorial within him, really) from making him say it. Nine factorial are pretty eager for the advent of Eleven, he knows, but it's true, so it doesn't matter. "I don't think I... told you this anywhere near enough, this time around... and I shouldn't even be talking to you, after what I... But Rose, you astonish me. You're... Hate to steal his line, but Rose, you're fantastic."

There may be tears in his eyes. Rose's expression can't change, but suddenly, he sees tears in her eyes too.

"I knew you were in there somewhere," she whispers. "I knew you could come back. Just need some sense knocked into you, that's all. You're still there. You'll do better next time. You'll do better from now on."

Her voice is aching and full of love. "My Doctor. Promise me. Go out and be my Doctor again. All right?"

He nods, jerkily. "I promise."

"Good. Now _go_. And don't look back!"

The other him runs away, to where the first him is already running, counting doors. "So damned far apart-- three--"

The lights flicker, and they spin around as one at the flash behind them--

--The flash of artificial lightning, crashing down into Rose, screaming as the white glow illuminates the world, body curved into a hideously graceful arc, screaming--

--and they hadn't even stopped to consider it-- what happens to a cyborg slave that doesn't follow its programming--

--totally missed the significance of 'don't look back'.

He doesn't want to be the sensible one; he wants to fall to his knees and go blank for a while, take a break from this horror and properly honor it by letting the shock hit him to his core-- he'd rather like to sob, to be hysterical, to go into high theatrics.

But then again, that would be what would dishonor her. "Go," she said. "And don't look back."

So he grabs the other him's arm and drags him up. "Later!" he hisses, and pulls his alternate self behind him mainly by sheer force.

Dying by light, dying in war. Oh, his Rose.

He pulls out his sonic screwdriver and lets out a curse when he sees how damned complicated the lock is. Then again-- the more complicated they are--

He zaps a wire with the screwdriver, and manages to hotwire the lock into opening.

_With ten thousand volts, we believe you--_

He shudders convulsively and pulls his counterpart inside.

"You start up the TARDIS," the other him says. "Get me a disk; I'm gonna download their files and post them on the internet. I've let this company stand for long enough."

"We really don't have time," he protests. "We've got to--"

"_I am not letting them get away with this._"

He sighs, just a little, and ducks into the timeship as his counterpart locks the door. The reinforcements have probably arrived; they'll be searching the corridors now.

He rummages through his counterpart's toolbox, finds what he's looking for, and hurries to the door.

His alternate self looks up and easily catches what he tosses at him. "This isn't--" he starts indignantly, then closes his mouth and smiles as he realizes what it _is_. "Right, that _is_ a better plan. Be right there."

He smiles too as he hurries to the console. The very special transmitter/router he found will solve both their problems; if it goes undetected, the Doctor will be able to hack into their systems at his leisure. Which just leaves _his_ problem.

"C'mon, old girl," he mutters, dusting off levers and buttons. "You can do this. Come back to me."

His alternate self hurries in. "No. I think maybe this is my responsibility."

Timeships can be tempernmental like that, so he abandons the console and goes to bar the TARDIS door.

"C'mon, old girl," his alternate self says, trying the sequence again. "I know I abandoned you. I know it's been a long time. Blame it on a mid-life crisis, I'm there in years if not in lives... come on."

The guards have, unsurprisingly, easily crashed through their company's own door. He's not sure they can do anything to the TARDIS-- unless they came prepared with dampers-- but they'll have dampers fairly close by, so somebody needs to say the right thing, and say it quick.

"I don't know how to make it up to you," his other self says, "and I probably can't. I know I shouldn't have abandoned you, and I'm sorry. I know sorry is-- is nowhere _near_ enough. I know I have a lot to make up for, so much it may not even be possible, but I can't start if you won't work with me again. Please..."

The lights flicker. Listening at the door, he hears the sound of something being set up outside and knows it's more temporal dampers.

"Please," his other self said softly. "She died to give me this second chance. Do it for Rose."

He pulls the last lever, and the engine miraculously starts, wheezing with a sound that lets him know he's going to be spending a _lot_ of time on maintenance work in the near future. "Yes! Yes. C'mon, just two jumps. Two jumps for me, old girl, and I'll fix you up good as new. Two jumps..."

The sound of the engines is terrifingly precarious, but, because she's the TARDIS, they hold. "Yes!" his other self cries, holding onto a lever for dear life. "Not far, old girl, two more jumps..."

The TARDIS settles, and he hurries out the door. "Good luck!" he calls, and closes the door. After all, it's only a matter of time before someone at GFK notices the two blue boxes right by their sign.

He ducks into his TARDIS, wishing he could've said a better goodbye, but time, as always, is of the essence. He listens to the sound of the other ship's engines, putting a view of the outside up on his screen; yes, she seems to have given him that second jump, the one to anywhere-but-here, probably the middle of space, to regroup and heal. The guards are pouring out of the building. Fortunately, their temporal dampers are occupied elsewhere, but he has no desire to dilly-dally here and see the sights.

He takes a deep breath and pilots his TARDIS home.

(-)

A few hours later, he's still drifting through interstellar space, calmed down enough to think clearly.

That first alarm he heard-- the one he never could place, but knew he'd heard before. It was the alarm of the Galactic Supreme Court Evidence Locker, were evidence from current and past cases was kept-- for at least a hundred years, if he remembered correctly.

Which meant the transmitter worked. His alternate self had hired a hacker, or more likely taken the job on himself, settling down with a computer somewhere in the vicinity and hacking into the GFK mainframe. Once he'd gotten enough incriminating information, he'd sent it to at least five newsfeeds, ten internet news sites, and at least one completely unrelated forum post. Probably even more, just to make sure even GFK couldn't keep it quiet.

And then? Had he stayed to follow it through? Had it really accomplished anything?

Well, probably. He can't imagine he'd forget _that_ particular lesson ever again.

He shudders. Responsibility. Something he'd forgotten so completely... Along with probability, and the fact that toppling governments and running was a dangerous business...

_Poor Harriet Jones. She may have been right. She at least had a defensible position..._

_I was just so tired of hurting... I didn't want to be sad anymore..._

_And I chose the worst possible way of trying to fix it. I thought if I just ignored what I didn't want to remember, it would work out. I should have known better, but I guess... I guess I wanted to believe._

_I took the coward's way out, and it's cost me._

He stares up at the ceiling, shivering again at the memory of Rose, screaming as the lightning caught her. _With ten thousand volts, we believe you..._

The show that had been on those televisions in Tokyo. The show that karaoke song had come from. One and the same.

He laughs helplessly for a minute. Sailor _Moon_, of all things. Pretty girls in skimpy dresses saving the world...

...By means of love. Always by means of love. And that might be a little girly, but it wasn't to be laughed at.

Love over violence, every single time. Power that could destroy any evil in the universe, but would take you with it.

But which might just bring you back as well.

Rose; his Rose. His Rose of lesser and more subtle wrongs.

She was wrong, even if he hadn't realized it at the time. That kiss _had_ marked him forever. One in a list of things that have marked him forever, but high on that list nonetheless. And he was a fool to ever deny it. _A carved notice of destiny, that tattoo._

He doesn't know what he can do about this. Doesn't know what to do to forget, to lessen the guilt, to atone. His Rose, whom he's left unwillingly behind (was it so unwilling? Is there something he could have done, but didn't, because she was dangerous and he so wanted to forget? A lesson that could have saved her, that he'd discarded in his haste to leave everything behind?). Before her time. Where he can't protect her-- not _he_ him, anyway. He doesn't know how to make up for that. He doesn't know what he can do next, for either of them.

...Except _say_ the words this time, damn it, because that's the very least he's ever owed her.

"_I'm sorry I'm not straightforward_," he sings, very softly. You can't really turn to face someone who was in an alternate dimension, so he just looks at the TARDIS control panel. "_I can say it in my dreams..."_

He has plenty to atone for, too. But all you can do is learn. All you can do is try,

(-)

He's not going to visit Earth again for a long time. It's a risky place, he knows; full of strange, brave, potential-filled, adventure-seeking people who will stumble into what he does and decide they don't want to leave. He can't handle that, he thinks. He needs to be on his own for a while, to learn, to remember, to make sure he doesn't make these sorts of mistakes again.

But he will come back. He will come back wiser, and stronger, and he will begin again.

Someday, he will prove Rose right.

And that will be enough.

(--)


End file.
